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Thursday, January 24, 2013

In
February 2013, AnceStories’ Scanfest will be Six Years Old! Miriam Robbins
organizes and hosts this popular monthly event that welcomes anyone with a
stack of scanning and a few hours to spend chatting with other family
historians. Scanning can be a boring task, but Scanfest actually makes it fun!

Make
the most of your scanning time with these tips to help you get the most from
your scanning equipment and make the best use of your scanning hours.

The #1 Secret to Scanning Success

Are
you getting the best possible results when you digitize family photos and
documents? Check your scanning savvy with these 6 Tips for Scanning Success.

Clean the Scanner Glass

Yep,
sounds pretty basic but it’s easy to forget. Old photos and documents are often
dirty and may even lose bits of paper when handled. Use a microfiber cloth
(used for eyeglasses or computer screens) to clean smudges and dirt from the
glass of your flat bed scanner. For tough jobs, lightly wet the cloth – not the
glass – then wipe the glass firmly with the damp cloth.

Use the Right Equipment For the Job

Equipment
does make a difference in the end result.
Your keepsake originals should only be digitized with a flat-bed scanner
or digital camera. DO NOT run heirlooms through a sheet-fed scanner where they
could be mangled and torn. Wand scanners are fine for books and pristine
documents, but less direct handling is safer for old paper.

Oversize documents can be
difficult to manipulate for on an 11 x 14-inch flat bed scanner; minimize the
potential for damage by using a digital camera mounted on a copy stand or
tripod.

Set Up A “Scan Station”

Make use of every minute by
keeping your equipment ready to go. If you have space, set up a Scan Station
near your computer on a file cabinet or table. Keep your scanner connected to
your computer with an external hard drive ready for file storage. Use two trays
or boxes to organize your work: To Be Scanned, Scanned. Don’t file away the
originals until you have added filenames and tags in your photo organizing
software.

Break Your Work Into Scanning Sessions

Save time and be more efficient
by breaking your scanning into two work sessions: In session one, complete the
actual scans; in session two, finish the computer work: add file names; write
metadata -- captions from the back of photos, tags with people, places, events,
copyright info; and place originals in archival storage.

Attend a Virtual Scanning Party

Scanning hundreds of old photos,
letters and documents can be a time-consuming task. Join an online scanning
party and watch your To Be Scanned pile dwindle down to nothing.

Most
scanners come pre-configured for easy scanning. You don’t have to do anything
after hitting the Scan button. But if you want access to some of the best
features of your flat-bed scanner, you’ll need to unlock the Professional Menu.
Look around on your scanner for a drop-down with more options, or check out the
manual. You may have Auto, Home, and Professional modes (on Epson), or some
other configuration.

When
you get to the Pro Menu, you will be able to set the best resolution for your
project, choose mode, target size, and unlock color correction and descreening
features. If you aren’t sure what all those options can do, refer to the manual
or the handy Scanning Guide in my book, How
to Archive Family Keepsakes (chapter 9).

For
most purposes, you only need to work with resolution (or DPI) and select Photo
or Document. If you wish, you can check Color Restoration to automatically
restore faded 1970’s color prints, or Descreening to get better images of
newspaper articles.

Join the Blog Book Tour for How to Archive Family Keepsakes January
10-26, 2013 for author interviews, book excerpts, giveaways, and more. Visit
the Blog Book Tour Pageat The Family Curator website for the complete schedule.

Proceeds from the sale of How
to Archive Family Keepsakes during the Book Tour will help fund the 2013 Student Genealogy
Grant founded in 2010 in honor of Denise’s mother, Suzanne Winsor Freeman.

It’s
easy to enter to win a free copy of Denise’s new book or one of the weekly giveaway
prizes. All you have to do is leave a comment to the Blog Tour Post hosted at
one of the official tour blogs. Random winners will also be selected from
social media comments on Twitter, FaceBook, and Google+.

Each
blog tour post comment gives you one chance to win; one entry per post per day,
please. Leave a comment at each stop on the blog tour and increase your chances
of winning. The lucky names will be announced each Saturday during the tour at The Family Curator.